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GIRLS SOCCER | Late goal stuns South Kitsap

GIG HARBOR — She watched silently as the ball fluttered around the net only to be knocked away by a defender before the whistle sounded.

Gig Harbor 1, South Kitsap 0.

That was the result Tuesday evening when junior midfielder Hailey Parker’s free kick was saved to end the Class 4A Narrows League match.

“We definitely had a few chances up close,” South coach Julie Cain said. “We had chances and we didn’t finish them.”

The Wolves (3-3-3 overall, 1-2-2 league) appeared poised to at least leave with a tie. But that changed in the 78th minute when sophomore midfielder Lauren Hatteberg — the daughter of former major-league first baseman and catcher Scott Hatteberg — took a rebound and put the ball into an open net to keep the Tides (5-0-2, 4-0-1) in first place.

“We let it ricochet three times and they had numbers in,” Cain said. “It was an effort goal by them.”

She said her team was not playing for a tie.

“I would have rather come out of here with a win,” Cain said. “I thought we played well enough to do that. Sometimes that’s the way it falls.”

Outside of Parker’s free kick, South’s best scoring opportunity might have come in the 38th when junior Adri Jackson’s shot hit the crossbar.

“I thought that first half especially we had a lot of the run of play,” Cain said. “We were passing well. We were probably taking our shots a little too far out.”

But she came away with a bigger concern from the match.

“Maybe the biggest story is the number of corner kicks we had,” Cain said. “I think there were about six or seven and we didn’t finish them.”

Despite that, Cain said she felt her team played well. She said she hopes the Wolves, who defeated Bellarmine Prep 3-0 on Thursday, can carry over their strong play into Thursday’s match at Yelm, which will conclude the first half of league play.

Because South has three weeks of league play remaining before the playoffs, Cain said she is not focused on the playoff picture.

“It’s too early to know,” she said. “Our league is kind of banging up on each other.”

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